A Message From Wolfgang, Chart Update, and MORE!

There are a few topics on the docket for today, and I’m gonna start by sharing something that is so unbelievably cool, it made me jump up and down. Literally.

1) A Message From Wolfgang! A couple weekends ago, my friend Felise treated me to a wonderful lunch at Spago, in Beverly Hills. You can read my blog about it here. If you didn’t know, Spago is the flagship restaurant of the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, and if you don’t know who Wolfgang Puck is, you need to crawl out from under your rock! He’s a huge celebrity chef, with cookbooks, tons of restaurants around the country (both fine dining and casual), and he makes frequent television appearances. You may have seen him last weekend on TV, as he catered the Governors’ Ball after the Academy Awards. Anyway, we had a fantastic time, and ate a delicious meal at Spago, and guess who saw my blog about it?WOLFGANG! I woke up this morning to find this video message from him, to me. It literally took my breath away – how cool is this?

Thanks, Wolfgang, for the amazing video – it made my day! I can’t wait to go to another one of your restaurants… I have my eye on WP24, which is Wolfgang’s newest restaurant (I think) in Los Angeles – it’s on the 24th floor of a skyscraper downtown, and I love a restaurant with a view! (Check out this blog as proof!)

2) Weigh-In and Chart Update. It’s been two weeks since I’ve last had a weigh-in, and two weeks since I’ve updated my chart. I opted to skip my weigh-in last week, because I’ve been on a plateau since the beginning of February, and I didn’t want to start obsessing because I was seeing the same number over and over again. The past two weeks I’ve been eating well, and working out, so I was hopeful that this plateau might be over.

I won’t lie and say my initial reaction was something other than disappointment, because it was. I’ve been working hard for the past month. In February, I worked out 23 out of 28 days, including 5 classes at Slimmons and 3 boot camp classes with Craig. My eating has been good, too. Plateaus are frustrating!

You know what changed my mood about the whole thing, though? A couple hours later, I was running around the house, gathering things so I could go run some errands and then hit the pool, and I caught, out of my periphery, a glimpse of myself in my bedroom mirror. And it stopped me in my tracks. For a split second I thought there was someone else in the room, and then I realized that it was me. I had seen myself from an angle that I wasn’t used to seeing, and holy crap, I looked good! That’s what ended up setting the tone for the rest of the day.

Before moving on, here’s the updated chart:

Which brings me to…

3) Pool. My workout at the pool was kick-ass! Here’s what I did:

1,000 yards warm-up (2oo free, 200 IM, 200 kick, 200 pull, 200 IM).

1 x 500 freestyle – I used to swim the 500 free competitively in high school, but don’t think I’ve tried to swim 500 yards without stopping since my interest in swimming resurfaced a few months ago, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

2 x 100 free at 80% exertion, followed by 1 x 50 free all-out sprint. That’s 250 yards, and I did it 4 times, so 1,000 yards total. Wrong! On one of the sprints, I caught myself not sprinting, so I made myself re-do it. So 1,050 yards total.

200 cool down (mix of free and breaststroke)

GRAND TOTAL: 2,750 yards, in 1 hour and 5 minutes! That’s 110 lengths of the pool, and just over a mile and a half. My best swim workout to date!

4) Rainbow Carrots. The last time I was at Whole Foods, I picked up a vegetable I’ve never seen before. I don’t think I ever mentioned it on the blog, but I’m mentioning it now… Rainbow Carrots!

They’re carrots, in other colors besides orange. I didn’t know carrots came in other colors besides orange. They don’t come in tons of other colors (or maybe they do and Whole Foods’ selection is lacking), but I bought some purple ones and some yellow ones. Here they are, next to one of their common orange cousin:

They’re a little smaller than the orange ones, but who cares. They’re also almost twice the price of the orange ones ($2.49 a lb for rainbow, versus $1.29 a lb for orange), but I just noticed on my receipt that I was changed $1.29 for all of them! Score!

Most of the time, I just eat carrots raw. I love them, and they’re easy to cut up and store, and it’s super easy for me to grab a handful as a snack as I’m heading out the door, which I do often. I also don’t bother peeling carrots. Do you? I find it time-consuming, and have found that with a good cleaning, they’re fine. So I chopped off both ends of each carrot and cut them into sticks. Here’s some of all three colors:

I love how the outsides don’t necessarily reflect the insides. Right in the center, you can see a carrot that’s purple on the outside, but yellow on the inside, and the two yellow carrots I cut up have different colored insides altogether. Call me a nerd, but I think that’s kinda fun! Who knew vegetables could be so mysterious?

As for the taste, they taste like carrots. Perhaps a touch less sweet, but basically the same. If I were blindfolded, I wouldn’t know the difference, I’m sure.

I’m heading back to Whole Foods tomorrow or Friday… I wonder what new produce item I’ll pick up this time!

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6 Responses to A Message From Wolfgang, Chart Update, and MORE!

How cool that he sent you a video!! (And is that a tiny Oscar-shaped cracker near his left hand?) Shows what a great person he is to take the time to create a shout-out. Good things happen to inspiring people! 🙂

I was at Whole Foods this evening looking for new fruits and veggies, and I’m really sad to say that I did not see rainbow carrots. I’ll definitely look when I go back though because they’re kind of awesome.

And seriously? Wolfgang? That is just so beyond cool. Good grief man…=0) I ate at Spago at Caesar’s in Vegas last year, and I fell in love with the bread..just saying. And seriously, Wolfgang…that is just incredible.

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In A Nutshell

A big hello to everyone that’s discovering Keep It Up, David for the first time! I’m glad you’re here.

My name is David. I live in Los Angeles, and I’m 38 years old. In January 2010, I began eating better and exercising more, so I could lose weight. So far, so good – I’ve lost and kept off 160 pounds! But it’s a tough road, and I need to keeping finding new ways to keep motivated and on-track. I’ll blog about my progress and share my struggles and successes. Join me on my journey!